


To Drive the Cold Winter Away

by Thevetia



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Christmas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-18
Updated: 2010-03-18
Packaged: 2017-10-08 02:26:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thevetia/pseuds/Thevetia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel makes some discoveries while visiting Jack's family over Christmas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Drive the Cold Winter Away

Time got lost at the SGC. Sometimes they went for weeks without seeing the daylight, or starlight, of Earth.

So P6R525 was a dry, barren, intermittently sandy planet, that is to say, a desert. At least that part of it where the Stargate was located. There were some nice ruins beyond the gate, recent enough and anomalous enough to intrigue everybody into puzzling out who and what could have built them and destroyed them and why, and where did they come from and where did they go. There was plenty to keep everyone busy, which was good. Lots of hard work, and hard thought, and nights of pleasant exhausted oblivion. Memories had no chance against the lures of new discovery. Even so, Daniel had caught Jack watching him every now and then, which bugged him, because he was fine. Just because it was a desert didn't mean anything. It wasn't anything like Abydos. Not enough sand. No people. No dreams.

But this time, when they came back home through the Stargate, and surfaced at last like moles up out of the mountain, it was suddenly December, and Christmas in the outside world.

"Daniel, got a minute?" Jack was lounging in the door of his office, hands in his pockets, looking so pointedly casual that he might as well have been wearing a sign that said, _Something Is Up._

"Uh, yeah, sure, no problem. What can I do for you?" Daniel dropped his pen and pushed away from his desk.

Jack toed the floor a moment before he slouched in. "Are you doing anything next weekend? Anything you can't get away from?"

"You know my schedule, Jack. You signed off on it last week."

"Yeah, well, it's Christmas, and I thought, maybe you might be, uh, busy...." Jack's eyes were fixed on something over Daniel's head, or maybe on the pikestaff on the back wall. "I'd like you to come to Chicago with me."

"For the weekend?"

"Yeah. Just a couple days." Jack picked up the bronze amulet of Bes that Daniel used for a paperweight and began tossing it from hand to hand.

"What for?"

"It's Christmas. Family. You know." Jack looked chagrined, as if caught in an embarrassing weakness.

Daniel's curiosity level rose several notches. "I didn't know you had any family in Chicago."

"Yeah. I don't see them much. Not for a couple-three years now." Jack was so nonchalant it hurt to watch him.

"Um, I don't want to intrude on something uh, personal and family..."

"It's okay. I told them I had a friend with nowhere to go for Christmas. " He spun the amulet in his palm, nearly dropping it.

Daniel frowned at Jack, not quite prepared to tell him to stop. Jack caught the look, and his hands stilled, clenched over the little Abydonian casting.

"It'll just be my folks, and my sister and brother and their families," he said. "Though not all of them all the time." He smiled, but it didn't stick on his face. He shrugged his shoulders. "It won't be much fun."

"Sure, Jack. Of course I'll come. Thanks. I think."

Jack smiled at that. "Thank me afterwards." He dropped the little figure of Bes carefully back onto the paper stack, and sauntered away.

Jack wanted to help him get through the holiday depression. Daniel warmed a little at that thought. Especially now, this year. If Jack had asked, Daniel could have told him it didn't matter, that Christmas was no big deal for him, but it was kind of Jack to try. A very Jack-like thing to do. And it was time that Daniel let go enough of his grief to let others be generous to him.

And anyway, it wasn't Wep-renet on Abydos right now. Daniel knew that because he kept a concurrent calendar on his desk. He still calculated it every year, but after he had seen her again he knew there was no point. She wasn't there anymore, and so there was no reason to imagine what their life would have been like on Abydos on any particular day. And then she was dead, and now all days were alike. So he knew it wasn't Wep-renet. Whatever was celebrated on Earth around its own solstice really didn't matter.

A few days passed, and decorations grew more garish in the commissary. For the first time in three years SG-1 was actually going to be off-duty over Christmas. Sam said goodbye on Wednesday, then headed off to San Diego for the long holiday weekend with her brother's family. Teal'c received permission and departed for one of his infrequent visits to his wife and son.

On Thursday Jack showed up in Daniel's office again, tickets in hand, and on Friday morning of Christmas Eve Daniel found himself pulling into Jack's driveway. He hadn't even turned off the engine before Jack was out the door and tossing his overnight bag into Daniel's backseat.

The flight was companionable. Daniel stared out the window at the nothing below, clouds all the way from Colorado to Illinois. He had a book to read, but somehow the great rolling sea of white dunes fascinated him, their promise of moisture and cold. Jack read the in-flight magazine with an interest only boredom could have initiated, then dozed. They could have been going anywhere in the universe, so familiar were their habits of travel.

He kept waiting for Jack to say something more. Why he had invited Daniel, something about his family. Who they were, what they did, what he thought about them, why he had never, ever spoken of them until now. But when Daniel tried to put words to his curiosity his tongue went thick and heavy and everything had double meanings. Double edges about family and loss and loneliness that still hurt Daniel too much to risk enduring the comparisons that knowledge would bring. He could wait. If Jack wanted him to know he would say something. _Yeah, right. Sure. Coward._

Nobody met them at the airport. Daniel made no assumptions, just filed that away in his mental notes on Jack: Personal Information: Family: Interpersonal relationships and customs.

It was strange to be in O'Hare with Jack. Strange to find their way without speaking through the airport maze and know that this was familiar ground to both of them. Strange, that their memories of it weren't mutual.

Outside the sky was gray and flat. A few flakes wisped down and blew like sand in the heated gusts of air from the terminal doors.

They headed out into the northern suburbs in a rented car, into territory unknown to Daniel. He had spent his years in Chicago at the Oriental Institute, and thought of Lincoln Park as being practically in Wisconsin. The area was attractive, in a stark, regimented way. The branches of the naked trees were outlined in fat cushions of fresh snow. The plows had been by recently, edging the streets with low drifts, and the lightly falling snow had frosted them pristinely white. In the commercial intersections every shop window was decorated, and the street lamps had wreaths of evergreens and red ribbons marching gaily off into the gray infinity. The lights were warm and cozy, speaking some primal language of hearth and home that tugged at Daniel.

He felt his spirits rise, ever so slightly. This wasn't Abydos. No memories here. This could be a new world.

Daniel sometimes wondered what he had missed by his non-standard upbringing. His parents had made him cynical about Christmas as a child, and his foster family were well meaning but clueless. They were older, childless, non-religious Jews, and though they tried for a few years to provide the presents and trappings of the secular holiday, they let it lapse when Daniel announced he was too old for Santa Claus anymore. It wasn't something he felt he needed, or missed. His parents had loved him without it. His foster parents had loved him too, and hadn't needed an official celebration to let him know.

But maybe somewhere there really was that mythical Christmas, all Dickens, and It's a Wonderful Life; with good cheer and joy to the world and peace on earth and extended families having eggnog around the blazing fire. He had seen so many images of it, seen so many people search with fierce nostalgia for it, that the weight of evidence was for the myth having a factual basis, for some people, at some time. Much like the mythical golden high school years he hadn't quite experienced either. Somewhere they all had to have been real, perhaps in that same place and time that Jack was so sure of, where all children grew up healthy and had loving parents, played games and ate ice cream, and were required to have a dog.

He turned to say as much to Jack.

Jack's hands were draped limply over the steering wheel while they waited at a light. He looked at Daniel, caught his bright expression.

"I always hated Christmas," he said with a grin. "All those extravagant promises that never delivered."

"Never?"

Jack thought about it for moment, his eyes vague. "Yeah. Pretty much." He flapped his hand across the wheel. "But I didn't know that for years."

"I never knew much about it. When I was little we spent Decembers in Egypt. I remember Eid al-Fitr a couple of times, and fireworks one New Year's Eve, but my parents thought Christmas was a "corrupted and meretricious commercial perversion".

"Meretricious?" Jack drawled.

Daniel said, "It's a beautiful word."

Jack raised an eyebrow. Daniel raised both back at him.

Jack's mouth quirked up, then sobered again. The light changed and his eyes went distant, attention back on the streets of somewhere that was neither this time nor this place. "Sara loved Christmas. Whatever made it work for Charlie was because of her. I always tried too hard. Must be something in me."

Afternoon was darkening and the air getting colder. The cryptically labeled car heater controls seemed to be stuck on 'defrost' despite all Daniel's tweaking, but the chill only added to his sense of the holiday wrapping around him, sharpening his anticipation.

It was a large, pleasant looking house, with symmetrical windows, set well back from the street. An enormous wreath of greens and berries hung on the door, and the mailbox was tied with a red bow. White icicle lights dripped from the eaves, glittering in the afternoon gloom. The snow was falling a bit thicker now, and the lights from the windows shone more warmly for being veiled. Daniel was enchanted.

Jack pulled up and parked, but didn't move. Daniel waited a bit, but nothing happened.

"Something wrong?"

Jack tilted his head, _yes-and-no_. "It's too late to get you a program and a scorecard. Just do your thing. Don't be any different because they're my relatives."

They got their overnight bags and headed up the neatly shoveled walk. Jack rang the doorbell.

It was opened by a short blonde woman about Daniel's age. She smiled blankly at them for an instant before recognition dawned.

"John! So you did decide to come! I thought Peggy was just blowing smoke as usual." She turned away and called over her shoulder, "Mike! Your brother's here!"

Jack gave her a quick, awkward hug. "Hi Megan. It's been a long time." Daniel stood back and did his best imitation of blending into the woodwork. Jack dropped his case at the foot of the stairs and Daniel followed suit.

"Megan, this is Daniel. He works at NORAD with me."

Megan gave him a nod but was already heading down the hallway. "Guess nobody heard me. We're all back in the family room. Go on and surprise them. I've got to raid the basement." She disappeared down the stairs.

Voices came from the back of the house, and Daniel followed Jack out of the entry hall and into the front room. He only had time to notice the impression of elegance and Christmas cheer, and the tall Christmas tree by the front window, all coordinated shades of white and silver. Through another door, down a short hallway, and then there was a rush of warm air, and smells of roasting and baking, and a crowd of people all speaking at the same time in a blur of welcomes and questions.

A large kitchen-family room took up most of the back of the house. Big windows opened onto the now darkening back yard. There was a TV in the corner AV nook, tuned to some football game, with a couple of sofas arranged in front of it, and an indeterminate number of young people crowding onto them.

Daniel hung back, smiling vaguely, while Jack met the tide of hugs and handshakes. Jack waved a hand behind his back at Daniel, urging him further into the room, and began the general introductions. "This is Daniel, Dr. Daniel Jackson. The friend I told you about who works with me at NORAD." Nods and smiles were sent in his direction as Jack reeled off names and relationships for Daniel's benefit.

There was a tall, white-haired man sitting at the kitchen table doing a crossword puzzle. That was Jack's father, Joe, and the bird-boned woman with champagne gray hair snapping beans at the kitchen sink was his mother, Peggy. Jack made a sketchy wave at his father, who nodded and smiled faintly. Jack offered a gingerly embrace to his mother, almost hiding her from sight.

"Johnny, so you finally came for Christmas," she said. She stood back and wiped her hands. "My god, what have you done with yourself? Would you look at him? All that gray. Makes you look ten years older."

Jack was grinning, a big toothy smile on his face the like of which Daniel had never seen before. It made him look like a psychopath.

The other people sorted themselves into Jack's sister Carol and brother Mike, and Carol's friend Steve. Megan returned and was introduced as Mike's wife. Daniel didn't catch who the teenagers and kids belonged to. A hand was waved at a man and two women sitting with Joe O'Neill, as Gary and Bev and Inga from up the street. Everyone was talking at the same time, calling across each other and the room, in snatches of conversations that picked up and died without apparent meaning or resolution.

Daniel filed them all, content to observe until required to participate. It made a change from the usual meet and greet. Daniel didn't know enough yet to pick up the threads of meaning lacing back and forth, and for once he didn't have to. In this realm Jack was the expert.

"Are you Air Force too, Daniel?" That was Jack's sister, Carol. Daniel was still trying to reconcile himself to the entire concept of Jack even having a sister. It was almost believable of this tall, big boned woman. She was wearing a bright red sweater with dancing reindeer knitted into the pattern across the front.

"Uh, no. I'm a civilian consultant." There was some curiosity at that. Daniel played it very safe and gave his usual set explanation about who he was and what he did, the one that contained no egregious lies but no real truth either.

"So how's the radar tracking going, John? Seen any early signs of Santa Claus yet?" If it was strange to see Jack with a sister, it was odder still to recognize this man as his brother. Mike was about Daniel's age, if a little shorter and more slightly built. He clearly took after their mother more strongly than Jack.

Jack still had that odd manic smile, but at least his voice sounded normal. "Nothing yet. Of course, even if we had, we're not allowed to announce it until midnight."

"Johnny, come over here, and make yourself useful. Get me down those serving trays on the top shelf."

Mike and Jack drifted away to the kitchen counter and Daniel was left standing awkwardly with Carol.

"Have you been to Chicago before?" she asked, while her eyes strayed past him.

"Uh, yes. I went to graduate school here."

"Oh, you and Terry will have lots to talk about. He wants to go to Northwestern. Terry, come over here!" Carol called across the room. "Jack's friend here went to Northwestern! Terry still doesn't know what to major in," she confided in a slightly lower voice.

Terry must have been one of the lumpish teens with a few too many piercings who was fighting with the younger kids over choice of TV channel. None of them paid any attention.

"No, no, sorry. I was at the University of Chicago, not Northwestern."

"Oh, well I know there are nice parts around the University," Peggy said. "But I don't think I've been down there for years. It's just too dangerous. Suppose the car broke down? I wouldn't feel safe." Some random lull in the noise level made her voice stand out.

"It's not safe. They're all on welfare and crack," said Joe O'Neill. The aggression of his words was startling, but there was something about his sardonic voice that implied something else.

"Here, Daniel, have some eggnog." Mike was back, sans Jack, and pressing a frosted glass in his hand. "I hope you like brandy and nutmeg."

"Thanks, fine." Daniel was being overrun by traffic from the dining table to the kitchen, and he backed further out of the way.

Jack was over by the kitchen table, rocking on his heels with his hands in his pockets, surveying the room. The brief bustle that had accompanied their arrival died away. Steve plopped himself on the sofa and switched the TV back to the game. Megan and Peggy were being purposeful around the kitchen island, and Mike was pouring eggnog refills for everyone who would let him.

Despite the appearance of chaos, there was a focus to the flow, around Joe O'Neill. Carol was constantly back and forth to get him things, more crackers, another glass, even though she didn't apparently pay any attention to what he was saying, talking to the neighbors instead.

Daniel was content to sip his eggnog, stand back, let the O'Neills be themselves and let Jack fall into his place with them. But after a while Daniel began to notice that Jack didn't. He just stood and smiled and barely spoke. That smile was beginning to grate on Daniel, the way it never wavered. Daniel found himself wanting to fill holes in the conversation, the awkward silences that followed whenever Jack spoke up.

"So, John, what's the real estate market like in Colorado Springs? I hear the whole Front Range is booming."

"Yeah, I guess so." Jack toyed with a cracker, breaking it into fourths. "I haven't kept up with it lately." His eyes shifted, apologetic.

"Geezus, John, it's typical enough that you let your house go in the divorce, but you're going to have to pay attention if you want to get back into financial shape. You're sitting in a market appreciating at thirty percent a year, and you won't find returns like that in your pension, or the stock market."

Jack didn't say anything but Mike didn't need encouragement. He was happy to tell Jack just how much money he had lost by not staying retired and taking Mike's advice on investing in real estate. Daniel had a good idea just how interested Jack was in real estate in Colorado Springs, but it didn't look like Mike did.

"Hey, anybody, what's the capital of Kazakhstan?" Joe looked around the table.

"Karachi?" Steve called out from the sofa.

"No, doesn't fit. Begins with A, something, something, something, T, something. Johnny, I guess you've wasted enough time in the armpits of the world to know what this one is."

"Don't start that again!" Mike broke in. "We stopped those stupid geography competitions back when we were kids." He glanced at Jack.

"Sorry," Jack shrugged, cheerfully rueful. "I must have missed Kazakhstan."

"Too bad. I might have finally got something useful out of your job," Joe said.

"Mike wouldn't know Kazakhstan from Cambodia, and never did," Carol confided to Daniel.

"I heard that!" Mike said. "At least I didn't spend my college years jumping out of perfectly good airplanes and scrambling my brains like John." He laughed and then added, "Or losing them getting stoned and laid at the ashram."

Carol laughed back, but it wasn't a sound of happiness. "No, you were too busy doing your little deals on the side. It's a wonder you ever learned how to read."

"Well, you can't blame my brains on the jumps. I was just as scrambled in high school." Jack was trying his dumbest and most ingratiating smile, the one he usually used when overwhelming numbers of aliens were holding SG-1 at weapons'-point. His _obvious target_ look.

"Not what I kept hearing from the teachers." Mike's tone had slid from genial sarcasm into irritation. "You were a hard act to follow."

There was a moment of awkward silence. Joe looked around at his three children and their sudden fixed expressions. He smiled. "Any more ideas?"

"Try 'Almaty'," Daniel offered.

"Works," Joe said as he scratched the letters into their boxes. "When your contract is up with the Air Force you ought to write crossword puzzles. Make those ivory-tower degrees useful." Daniel smiled at that, uncomfortably. He had the feeling, probably unjust, that Joe was making a joke at Daniel's expense.

"Are you married, Daniel?" Peggy asked.

The question was like the jerk of a falling dream waking him up, shuddering. _It's nothing personal,_ he told himself, _she's just making polite conversation the way women her age do_. But still, he couldn't lie. He couldn't, not now, betray her, even if it meant remembering.

"Uh, yes, well, I mean, I was. She's dead." If Peggy's question hadn't been heard by all, surely his stammering answer was. There was another of those odd silences among the O'Neills.

Peggy was all sympathy. "Oh, I'm so sorry. You're far too young to have that happen to you. So you two had to have met in college."

"No. No, we, we.... I'm an archeologist and we met while I was on a, a dig. In... Egypt."

"She was an archeologist too?"

"No. She was one of the local people. She was... helping us."

"That's very nice."

"Mother!" Carol muttered.

Mike snickered.

Jack was signaling him something disapproving, the look that meant, _Shut up now, please._ Daniel couldn't figure out why. He was being very careful not to mention anything even remotely classified, even though the memories were so hard to keep back.

He didn't have to worry about what it was that he wasn't supposed to say. The neighbors, whom he had never quite identified, were making their good-byes and thanks, and in the jostle and noise Jack snagged the empty cheese and cracker tray, tapped Daniel on the arm, and took him into the big walk-in pantry in the angle of the kitchen.

Jack was tense. His shoulders were hunched and he seemed smaller. He was opening cupboards and searching for something, but Daniel knew the action was displacement, even when Jack apparently found what he was looking for. A can of black olives, which then required another search for a can opener.

Daniel tried for something distracting. "So, tell me about these neighbors. I didn't get much of an introduction."

"Oh. Sorry. Ask Carol, or my mother. I don't know them either. Dammit, I can't find a thing in here." Jack slammed another drawer and visibly willed himself to relax.

Daniel looked questioning.

"It's not the house I grew up in. My parents moved back to Chicago after I left for college." He found a can opener at last but seemed to have lost interest in the olives. "The house I remember was where we lived in Minnesota."

"Johnny, what the hell are you breaking in here?" Peggy came in and took the can away. "Nobody but you ever liked those olives, so don't bother with them." She stuck it back on the shelf and brushed them all out back into the kitchen.

"Where are you staying tonight, Daniel?" she asked. Daniel was taken aback. He looked at Jack.

"Last time I asked, Mom, you said there was always plenty of room here," Jack said, before Daniel could recover.

"Oh, of course there is. You two can stay here if you want," she said. "I'll get the kids to move their stuff out of the basement. I told them they could have the rec room so they could have their own TV." Her lack of enthusiasm was noticeable.

"Thanks, Mom, you know I always loved that mini-couch. What about Mike's old room?"

"I've put Terry and his friend in there." Jack and his mother stared at each other. Daniel was beginning to wonder what undercurrents he wasn't picking up. "Well," she said at last, "it's not as if I need to keep a room for you. And the kids need space for when they visit."

"They live two miles away, Mom." Jack hardness faded suddenly. "It's okay," he said with an effort. "We'll be fine. Thanks."

Daniel had no chance to object that it would be no trouble for them to go elsewhere. Megan and Carol shooed them out of the kitchen as the last preparations for dinner began. Even the teenagers were finally put to work, setting the table, laying out the decorations.

Daniel escaped in search of the bathroom. When he returned he detoured back into the front room, hoping to find a moment of quiet to think about what he had seen. The living room was a picture from a Christmas catalog. The Christmas tree had been lit and twinkled glamorously. All the ornaments were matched sets of big globes in silver or gold or clear glass. Even the presents under the tree looked as if they had been wrapped in paper chosen to coordinate. The furniture was upholstered in cream and white, plump and undarkened by wear. Green wreaths draped the mantelpiece beneath the tasteful display of cards. It was a warm and beautiful room, inviting response, inviting the nostalgia for a lost past. But the room was empty and Daniel couldn't quite imagine the O'Neills actually living in here. Probably, they never had.

There was a bookshelf along one wall next to the fireplace, and Daniel gravitated naturally in that direction.

Along the breakfront were framed photographs, typical emblems of a family's growth and change. Wedding pictures, baby pictures, children holding awards, adults in situations that Daniel couldn't guess at, meaningful only through knowledge. And then something he recognized.

It was a photograph of Jack, posed in the style of all graduation pictures. Jack at eighteen was all shaggy dark hair flopping around a heart-shaped face and a startlingly sweet and hopeful smile. The only adjective Daniel could apply to this boy was "cute".

The next picture was of the whole family at Carol's graduation. It was a few years later -- Jack was in uniform. His hair was buzz cut now and the sweet smile was gone, replaced by an early, unsuccessful attempt at Jack's trademark superior smirk. It only made him look insecure instead. Or maybe that was Daniel reading what he knew of Jack now into the Jack of long ago -- _his_ Jack had never looked so desperate.

"He was quite a pretty boy, wasn't he?" Joe said from behind him.

Daniel wasn't sure he liked the choice of words, but answered agreeably, "Jack was a good-looking kid."

Joe snorted. "How long have you known Johnny?" he asked.

"About three - four years." Daniel turned away from the photographs and tilted his head to scan the book titles, glancing back at Joe.

Joe smiled. "So you know he's a faggot."

Daniel paused, nonplussed. Was that supposed to be a joke? "No," he said carefully. "I don't think so."

Sharp dark eyes turned towards him. "Not very close, are you?"

"For one thing, if that were true Jack would be dishonorably discharged."

"Oh, he doesn't _do_ anything about it. He doesn't have shit for brains. Or if he ever does do anything he makes damn sure no one will ever tell. All faggots are cowards at heart."

"I don't know how you can say that about Jack. He was married, had a son - "

"Yeah, all that window dressing bullshit. Thought if he found a woman who'd have him he wouldn't have to worry. Sara was no good for what ailed him. Kid probably wasn't even his. But he had to make all that show when the brat died of stupidity."

Daniel had gone from frozen shock through bewilderment to an anger so profound he felt himself in the midst of a great calm. Words broke away from their meanings and tumbled down. Images dissolved and reshaped themselves.

Joe patted him on the shoulder. "Johnny can be charming. It's the one good thing he's got going for him. But I thought you ought to know." Joe tilted his head to one side and Daniel could see as if in shadow, in the line of an eyebrow, the shape of nose and cheekbones, bits and fragments of Jack. "You seem to be a nice, normal guy. Don't want you to get surprised in the night."

And this was Jack's father. The sarcastic inflections, the mocking overlay, all echoes of Jack. But at the heart nothing but a mean cleverness that saw that Daniel valued Jack, and was amused to try to degrade that value.

Daniel wondered where Jack was. When he heard Megan call out that dinner was ready and everybody get their butts in their chairs, he had to steel himself to rejoin the O'Neills.

\----

Christmas dinner with all the trimmings. From a distance, it looked like a Norman Rockwell illustration. Gleaming brown turkey, heaps of stuffing, festive candles, wreaths of holly on the steamed plum pudding, as genuine as something straight from an imported Fortnum and Mason's can could be. Family all in place: white-haired patriarch at one end; matriarch glowing with pride of workmanship at the other; prosperous adult children and friends in animated conversation around the well-laid table; a modest sprinkling of grandchildren in the background, not too many, not too loud.

From up close, Daniel was losing his appetite. Jack was still displaying that disquieting passivity. His mother and father and siblings didn't seem to notice. They passed the gravy, and agreed that the stuffing was better than last year's, and smiled over their participation in such a commercial ritual.

Steve and Carol were being ironic over the usual Christmas plea for peace on Earth.

"And of course we're going to be dropping bombs from a safe distance again," Carol asserted. "The heroes of all this are the Palestinians and the Chechens and the Somalis. The only justifiable violence is spontaneous and personal."

Random sentences of agreement breached the general noise level.

"The military are all sexists and the Air Force is the worst. Sure there are a few daddy's girls as window dressing, but any woman in the Air Force is just demeaning herself." Peggy? Megan? Daniel couldn't tell.

"It's such a sham, all that military glory and honor crap. I can understand you as a kid you buying into the scam about duty and heroism. But really, Johnny, all these years and you're still there? I can see what they mean when they say that only the second-rate make it in the military." Joe reached over and began dishing out a second helping of peas. "I mean, look, you're working with an academic, for crying out loud! 'Those who can't do, teach.'" Joe grinned at Daniel. "Sorry, Dr. Jackson, but you know it's true. Keeping the skies safe at NORAD is a sinecure at the public trough, like all civil service jobs. Pass the butter, please."

"No," Jack agreed, "we're not heroes. It's not in the job description." And for a terrible moment, Daniel could see Jack believe it. Could see the light fade and go flat in his eyes. Then Jack lifted an eyebrow and glanced at Daniel, and the illusion, or vision, vanished.

He and Jack might as well have been invisible. Or, if not invisible, then doubles from some other universe whom everyone assumed to know. Except that even beyond the mirror Daniel had never seen a Jack who resembled the one the O'Neills acted as if he were.

Jack was their object lesson. Every word and tone of Carol's was all sympathy for the bad choices Jack had made with his life, his marriage, his friends; Jack as an example for her kids to avoid. Mike and Megan were patronizing, and Steve contemptuous, and all done with a smile, an ironic voice, a laugh and look that deflected the meaning of their words. They were all like that. The joke was always assumed to have been made. Always brightly skeptical, amusingly cynical. They saw through everything, amused at the naivete of the two strangers in their midst.

It wasn't the most difficult situation Daniel had been in. His last few academic conferences had been at least as vicious. But this one hurt because it wasn't his fight. It was Jack they were going after, and Jack wasn't fighting back. He smiled a lot, oblivious to the contempt, and said very little, and nothing in sarcasm or retort. As if he were drugged by the poison of his past, paralyzed by battle scars that Daniel could only dimly conjecture. Daniel was angry that Jack had dragged him into this, and embarrassed for his scarcely acknowledged daydreams. He should have known that when Jack opened up his personal life, it was never for good.

And then he figured it out.

He knew why he was there, why Jack had asked him to come. Not explaining, trusting that Daniel would understand, and forgive. It wasn't for Daniel's sake, but for Jack's.

It was to hold him secure, here in the heart of his enemies. It was to show them, and himself, that there were values, that loyalty mattered, that there were some things that counted in this world. Daniel was Jack's talisman, his amulet against them.

It was an honor.

And when Megan decided it would be interesting to interrogate Daniel about his family, Daniel decided it was time to stop being so polite.

"So, how did your parents feel about you marrying an Egyptian girl?" she asked as she passed a plate of rolls to the table where the teens were sitting.

"They didn't feel anything." Daniel paused until he caught her eye. "I'm sure you must know what that's like."

Steve said something Daniel didn't catch, but he had no difficulty recognizing from Mike and Megan's reactions that it had been a dirty joke. Mike said, "That's a real commodity: dark meat. There ought to be a listing on the Board of Trade, right up there with cocoa futures and pork bellies. You could make a bundle speculating."

And at last Jack started to look very familiar to Daniel, though it was odd to see this particular expression on Jack when he wasn't in full gear and armed: the way his smooth facade tightened and the tension of his body broadcast an alert: _danger, watch out, get ready to go_. When he caught Jack's eye Daniel felt his right hand drop automatically to where his side arm would have been, and it didn't seem strange at all.

He almost didn't hear it. The joke that Joe was making. "Johnny could give us tips on where to look and Dr. Jackson can sample them for us. You know, like coffee tasters. " He made sure his audience was listening. "He's had the experience. You just spit out the ones you don't like."

There was laughter at that, and reaching for the plate of Christmas cookies.

"That's it," Jack said. He stood up, calm and slow, and collected Daniel with his eyes. "Daniel, let's go."

Daniel recognized this action too. It was no different here in this comfortable suburban American dining room than it had been on dozens of worlds across the galaxy. Speech and diplomacy had failed. These people had nothing to offer them, and nothing they wanted in return.

Cold hurt radiated from Peggy. "You haven't changed a bit, Johnny. Can't even be bothered to stick around for Christmas."

"Running away again?" Joe leaned back in his chair. "Typical chickenshit stuff. Always have to make the big scene."

Daniel looked around the table. Nobody protested. The knowledge of what they had been doing was in their faces.

Jack walked out of the room without a word.

Daniel got up, paused at the door, and then he thought, _Fuck it,_ and followed Jack.

Jack had both their overnight bags in the car before Daniel had made it out the front door, and they were moving the moment he got in.

The snow flurries had turned to rain and the streets were shiny with melted slush. Lights reflected off the surface, the red tail lights of passing traffic, and the stop lights red and green: the only true signs of Christmas. The large, secure, smug houses lining the road presented row after row of bright, cold, white lights. Daniel was glad Jack was driving. Jack drove around a couple of blocks and then stopped. They sat in the car, chilled without the heater having warmed up.

"That went well." Jack said at last. It was a joke of course, a catch-phrase between them, but there was more truth in the tone than Daniel was used to hearing.

"Right."

"Better than last time, three years ago. I walked out before dinner then. I guess I've learned a little more patience. Had a lot of practice the last couple of years." Jack's face was impossible to read in the dark, but Daniel knew him very well, and could tell from the set and angle of his head, from the cool, emotionless voice, that Jack was controlling himself very carefully.

"So why? If you knew it would be like that."

"Stubborn, I guess. I won't give them the satisfaction of knowing they made me say 'Fuck it.' I used to think if I kept trying maybe something would change. I've given that up. They're happy the way they are, I suppose. But I had to keep doing it, for my sake."

Jack took a deep breath and sighed. Calming down.

"That was cruel, what they said about you."

"Yeah, it's the way they are. They're right, though."

"No. They're not. They don't know you." Daniel was surprised by his certainty. So was Jack, since he spared a quick glance away from the kaleidoscope of the cars rushing past. Jack's tight mouth relaxed just a fraction.

"Nice of you to say that." Jack sighed again, and rubbed his forehead. "This was just a typical Christmas."

Jack pulled back into traffic. The quiet in the car was peaceful, a cocoon of shared solitude. There was a lot for Daniel to think about, to come to terms with.

"I had an odd conversation with your father," Daniel said.

"Oh?"

"He tried to tell me you were, uh, bisexual, I guess."

"That sounds like him. He hates that I have a life that isn't of his making. " Jack's unsurprise was a bit disconcerting.

"Why would he say that?"

Jack didn't answer. The silence lingered between them, transforming from emptiness to fullness of meaning.

"Oh," Daniel said at last. Another kaleidoscope piece spun around and fell into place.

The dark maze of suburban streets ended in a sudden rush of light and form. _Pizza, Gyros, Starbucks, Antiques. Christmas sale. Only 2 more days. Cellular phones. Open 'til midnight._

"It's okay, Jack. There's no problem." His words sounded trite and banal and he winced to himself. _Of course there's a problem._

Jack surprised him again. "I know," he said, glancing across. In the dimness only the sharpest lines in his face were clear, the ones of pain and rueful humor. "It doesn't mean --" A weaving SUV cut right in front of them. Jack slowed down and changed lanes. "He was just being an asshole. He probably hoped you'd run screaming. If he'd thought you were gay he would have been parading my old girlfriends."

"I didn't think..." Daniel began. Actually, he didn't know what he thought. He was still processing.

They were on the expressway now, heading into darkness. "Where are we going?" Daniel thought to ask at last. He had no idea where they were.

"I don't know yet. Do you want to try to go back home tonight? We might manage to get on a flight to Denver."

"That doesn't sound likely. I'd rather not spend the rest of tonight in O'Hare. We can get a hotel room and leave tomorrow."

"Okay."

They drove in silence. Daniel fiddled with the heater some more and eventually produced a thin draft of warm air. He scrubbed his cuff against the window and wondered what lay in the darkness beyond the lights of the expressway. Occasional houses were silhouetted by street lights, some lit, some dark. When he glanced back Jack's face looked ill in the green glow from the dashboard lights, but the stiff set of his shoulders was gone.

After a long time, "Thanks, Daniel."

"Thanks for asking me."

And no more needed to be said.

They got a room at one of the businessmen's hotels that ringed the airport, all characterless simulation of luxury. Its slightly seedy blandness was soothing, somehow more real, anchoring Daniel to a simpler world, without symbols or subtexts. Where he could impress his own meanings on things, or lack of meaning. He slept, and didn't dream.

The flight crews the next day were all determinedly cheerful, and a little apologetic, as if it were somehow their fault that they were travelling and working on Christmas Day. On Christmas morning. Why weren't the passengers with their _families_, what was wrong with two apparently normal, well dressed, healthy middle-aged men that they were sitting in a airplane instead of home opening presents? Building kid's toys, and futzing with wrapping paper, and arguing over whether or not the batteries worked.

Daniel wondered how much Jack missed doing stuff like that with Charlie. Or if there was something else that Jack missed, that Charlie's loss had swamped. His own loss seemed so simple, the pain so pure and finite. The future he had lost had been scarcely imaginable, unbounded by the demands or hopes of his past. He hadn't been predicting anything, content with letting the present shape the future. But Daniel suspected that Jack had tried to put all his future into Sara and Charlie, and far too much of his past as well.

Colorado Springs was clear, cold and dry. The mountains were white and painful against the surreal blue of the morning sky. The streets were nearly empty of traffic, and as Daniel drove Jack back to his house he imagined what it might be like behind the windows and doors they passed. Everyone at home, cocooned in their private spaces, tuning in the early football games. Kids arguing over their presents, crying over the ones that had already broken, envious of others. Hurting or joyful, expectations fulfilled or frustrated. Husband and wives, parents and children, pulling together and pulling apart.

Daniel parked in Jack's driveway. Deja vu. Jack was going to get out, give him that look of obvious false cheer, and then disappear inside to his usual solitude; and Daniel would go home to his own books and interests; and this disastrous trip would crystallize in memory as failure and awkwardness. _So much lost. So much._

Daniel switched off the engine. "Mind if I come in?"

The relief and pleasure in Jack's smile made Daniel smile to match it.

"Sure," said Jack. "Stick around and we can get some dinner. I know I've got something in the freezer." Daniel frowned at that, remembering the usual contents of Jack's freezer. "Or we could find somewhere open and go out," Jack added, quickly. "I owe you."

"Sounds fine. Thanks."

Once inside, Jack headed straight for the kitchen, muttering about airplane food and snacks. Daniel followed after him, then lingered in the dining room.

Jack had a Christmas tree. It was about two feet high and sat conspicuously on the divider between the dining room and living room. Gold foil stars dangled from its scrawny branches, and one skein of miniature colored lights wound around and trailed down the wall. Struggling, but alive. _Or dead_, Daniel mentally amended. Dry needles dusted around the base, scenting the house faintly with resin. But Jack had gone to the trouble of getting a Christmas tree, that no one but he would know about.

_Not all lost._ Daniel went over and plugged the lights in. The tree glittered and winked, gaudy, tacky and just a shade sarcastic. That primal nostalgia was back again, and Daniel let himself enjoy it.

There were a dozen or so Christmas cards set up on the divider next to the tree. He knew the ones from Sam, and the General, and Janet and Cassie, and the big gag one from SG-12 that was such a bitch to prop up so that the pop-up stood out. He tried to fix it and knocked the whole set over like dominoes. As he set them back his eye was caught by one he didn't recognize, of a sky thick with stars on a winter's night. Fallen open. _Merry Christmas, Sara &amp; Ted._ He set it back carefully, feeling oddly shamed.

"Chicken okay?" Jack yelled from the kitchen. "I've got one of those barbecue roasted ones in the freezer."

"What?"

Jack appeared in the kitchen doorway. "Frozen roasted chicken. We can thaw it in the microwave. "

"Fine with me."

"What we really need is a prime rib," Jack muttered. "Something that doesn't resemble turkey."

"That's okay. It won't."

Jack gave him a pained look.

Daniel smiled a little in apology. "I don't really feel like going out. We'd just get another dose of guilt for making people work on Christmas day."

Daniel started the coffee and scrounged inside Jack's refrigerator. Jack took the chicken out to thaw, looking vaguely dissatisfied. He disappeared from the kitchen, though Daniel could still hear him in the other rooms. Doing the coming home and settling in chores, the tiny unconscious ones one never noticed doing. Reclaiming his territory. Daniel had seen Jack do it many times, in other situations. Before a mission, as he adjusted SG-1's gear; after a mission, as he made the rounds of the SGC, finding excuses to just touch the things, and people, that mattered. Daniel knew that feeling, though he was more shy of expressing it. And Daniel thought, _He scarcely touched anything in that house. Or anyone, after the first greeting._

Jack's supplies were reasonably fresh and Daniel started slicing up salami and tomatoes. Jack came back and slid past him to get to the kitchen trash can, his shoulder deliberately brushing Daniel's back. Daniel was another part of Jack's homecoming.

Jack set the chicken in the microwave and sat down with Daniel at the kitchen table, waiting for the coffee to drip. He looked a little more content, gazing out the alcove window at the dead brown lawn, mottled with a few patches of old snow in the shadows. A corner of the alcove just caught a bit of the wan midwinter sun so that a stripe of warm light lay across the table. Daniel sipped his coffee and watched the light creep sideways across his plate, like some kind of wildly inaccurate sundial. Heading for the point that marked the turning of the year.

"I thought you deserved to know," Jack said at last, as if answering a question. He looked down at his hands, then sideways at Daniel.

"Know what?" Daniel stalled. He wasn't sure he was ready yet to find out more.

Jack shrugged. "All of it." He frowned and rubbed his eyebrow with his thumb.

Daniel rocked his coffee spoon in and out of the light on the table. "So your father is a bigot who enjoys setting his children against each other. That doesn't have anything to do with you."

Jack frowned a little. "No. It's not me, not now. But things are still there. Who I am. What I did."

"You did better than them, all of them."

"Maybe." Jack didn't look like he believed it. "I kept looking to them for something. It took a long time to realize that I wasn't going to find it there. Then I played around a lot in college. Did a lot of, you know, wild stuff."

"Really?" Daniel was still wrapping his mind around it. He hadn't imagined Jack doing that kind of wild stuff.

"It's true, as far as it goes. Not very far." Jack smiled at that, an expression Daniel recognized. Jack mocking himself. "It was the '70's, for crying out loud. Everybody was doing crazy things."

The microwave dinged. They split the chicken, a bag of soft rolls, the salami and tomatoes, and a bottle of red wine between them, eating with their fingers at the kitchen table.

The silence was comfortable. Soon the sun dropped behind the hedge at the back of the yard, and the yellow glow of winter light melded to cool early shadows. There was the stab of memory again, of long lit shadows, of a simple meal without pretense, of having found something he didn't expect and didn't know how to evaluate.

"I was never wild in college." Daniel offered. "I loved my studies too much. Never had the time. And then, Abydos. You know."

"You didn't miss much. It was all pretty lightweight. Then. Not the stuff that counts." Jack smiled a little tightly. "I gave it all up when I joined the service. I knew what I wanted. I knew there was something, something more important. Then I met Sara, and for a while I had it all. What I hadn't had before." He spread his fingers across the table, flat in the warm streak of light. Flexed them once, then quieted. "Who knows how things could have turned out?" He didn't look up. "Maybe not good."

"Don't," Daniel said. "They're not you."

Jack looked up at him, and there was a strange wealth of gratitude and perception in his eyes.

After they cleaned up they watched an old Christmas movie that Daniel had seen part of before, about a kid in the Midwest in the 40s. Jack seemed to know it well. They didn't talk much. Something a little too serious for quick words hung between them, and Daniel was content to let it work itself out.

During a commercial break, Jack said, "I used to think, you only get to love once or twice in your life, if you're lucky."

"That's optimistic."

"Look at us. We've both been lucky. At least once."

"But not anymore." Daniel's response was automatic. "Not with our lives as they are."

Jack tilted his head and gave him a steady, assessing look. "We have to take what we have. What we can get." Jack toyed with the remote, rolling it in his hand and occasionally hitting a button accidentally. It was annoying, but Daniel was used to it. "Maybe not in the usual places." He spun the remote in the palm of his hand, nearly dropping it.

Daniel said, "On Abydos luck is the gift of Bes. There, when you say that someone is lucky, you say, 'He has found Bes's children'." The commercial ended, but Jack was still looking at Daniel with that curious understanding. The words and memories poured into Daniel's heart, like warm and golden sand. "And at Wep-renet, at the change of the season of dry to wet, people give him his children back. Just for the day, so he will have them give to away again. They make lots of little clay dolls, and set them up around the hearth in front of the amulet of Bes, so he can see that they're back. Everybody does it, no matter how much misfortune they've had in the year, because whatever it was, it was one of Bes's children."

"See. What I said. You can't look at life like a gift horse. It's what you find, not what you're looking for," Jack said.

And now Daniel knew that they were talking about something more than luck. It was all their lives and loves and losses, all that they had been lucky to have had.

Daniel thought of Jack's family, whose love had no room for Jack. Of his oblique admissions. He could see Jack through his easy words, reaching out when he was young in all directions, trying to find what he knew must exist, though he had never quite known its reality. The openness then that had made him the man he was now.

And Daniel saw himself, as he had been, searching through the past for that same thing, finding and losing and gaining.

_Not what you're looking for._

He hadn't been looking for a wife, and then there was Sha're. The pang of her loss was still there in his heart. But now he dared to touch the loss and open himself to it, and it was smoothed from long use, the sharpness worn away. What was left was warm and heavy, an ache that he was glad to bear and to remember. He was lucky to have had every moment of it.

He hadn't been looking for a friend, and then there was Jack.

Jack had been, maybe still was, attracted to men as well as women. Daniel didn't have any problem with that, theoretically. He was still coming to grips with applying this new knowledge to his understanding of Jack. That might be a bit harder. But Jack was not going to act on it, and that Daniel could believe with no difficulty at all. To do so would be destructive of order and discipline in the service he had sworn his life to, and Jack was already almost hollow with all the things he had lost.

What was Jack not looking for?

Daniel had no idea. He didn't want to invade Jack's privacy any further.

Daniel went out to the kitchen and came back with what was left of the chicken and the wine. He dropped himself onto the sofa and Jack shifted over.

"I like your Christmas tree," Daniel said. "It's very you."

"Thanks. I think it needs popcorn chains though."

Daniel filled their wine glasses and settled back to watch TV, as the movie started over again.

"Merry Christmas, Jack."

Jack smiled back at him, warm and just slightly sardonic. Like Jack.

"Merry Christmas, Daniel."

They drank the last of the wine, and ate the rest of the chicken, pulling the bits off the bones with their fingers.

Cold chicken, and a dimestore tree. Daniel was happy, in an uncomplicated way. And when he slept that night his dreams were of some unremembered but deeply beloved place, and of warmth and welcoming and belonging.

It was Wep-renet, when brightness returns after the long journey in the dark.


End file.
